


The Timely Dew of Sleep

by Rose Argent (roseargent)



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 13:32:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/pseuds/Rose%20Argent
Summary: After everything is over Ashley Riot must come to terms with his past, and his uncertain future.





	The Timely Dew of Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodbright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodbright/gifts).



> This is a heck of an intimidating fandom to write! I hope you like my take on it, and enjoy the fic!

If he had once been an unquestioning blade in the dark for Parliament, it was only fitting that now Ashley turned his skills to stymieing their plans. He had a nose now for the most vile of the lot, the ones who cared for their own profit more than the good of the nation, could smell it rolling off them even before he touched their souls. Their thoughts left a stain on Ashley's spirit, but still he hoarded their secrets, sifting through them to find the one plan he could disrupt, the one thread of corruption he could sever.

It was a more subtle way of thinking than Ashley liked, but the longer he lived as a fugitive the more he let the voice inside that sounded like Callo Merlose guide his hand. Like an Inquisitor, hidden lockboxes full of documents became his weapons, and though his sword hand ached and itched and twitched for action, he abstained. There would be no reckless rush to self destruction here, no bloody slaughter in the halls of Parliament, and he would remain free to act again another day.

They chased him, relentlessly but blindly, and while their backs were turned he nipped at their heels, bleeding them little by little. 

There was action enough in the end, in any case. There were shipments of illicit goods to be redirected, ill-gotten coins to be stolen back, and the Dark's trickery and illusion were seldom enough. Sydney could have charmed the birds from the trees and made them think it their idea to walk instead of fly, but for Ashley the Dark was still more an assassin's dagger than a chirurgeon's scalpel, and so his sword never saw the rust of disuse.

That the Church was as corrupt as Parliament loomed ever in his mind, but Ashley didn't dare test those walls yet. He'd seen too many sorcerers in holy garb; his mastery of the Dark was not yet enough for a foray into the heart of the Cardinal's power. 

He had time. He had nothing but time, and the Dark.

\--

"So cautious, Riskbreaker. More power than ever before, and yet you pick at your enemy from the shadows."

Always, Sydney's words cut to the heart of Ashley's worries. He would call it the nature of dreams, save that the same had been true ever since he met the man. 

"There's no one to take up the sword after I fall." He'd prided himself on working alone, as a Riskbreaker. And yet he'd been able to charge into danger without a thought because he had known that he was only one of many--should the unthinkable happen there would always be another to take his place.

"Strange sentiment for a man who cannot die."

"Strange words from an immortal who has died. They all want the power of the Dark, and I cannot imagine the Cardinal or Parliament any less ruthless than Guildenstern." Ashley liked his skin where it was, and could happily go the rest of his life without ever seeing someone else wear it like a cloak.

Sydney smiled that insufferable smile. "And yet you have not made the best of your most subtle tool."

Ever the bone of contention between them. "My mind is not suited to your twisty way of thinking." Even when he plotted and planned, Ashley thought of it more as Inquisitor's work than the sorts of grand manipulations Sydney was capable of--he only sought out information and made use of it.

Cold metal fingers traced the lines of the Rood on Ashley's back, the lightest of touches, never quite breaking the skin. "Upright, and stained red as heart's blood. I suppose that says much about what the Dark will be for you."

"You chose me. The time for regrets is long since past."

Sydney pressed his palm flat against Ashley's back, the metal of his hand now warmed to the temperature of Ashley's skin. "I have never regretted choosing you."

Ashley frowned, and the dream wavered. That was too much like what he wanted to hear and, of all the lies Sydney had told, none of them had ever been crafted to soothe. 

A soft laugh and hot breath on the back of Ashley's neck, and then Sydney murmured into his ear, "You're thinking maybe this is all your mind telling you pretty lies again. I'm flattered that you think it would show you _me_."

The fabric of the dream frayed and pulled apart before Ashley could answer, and then he was awake and alone. No, not quite alone--the Dark whispered quietly, always, in the back of his mind--but absent of human company.

\--

Ashley kept to no particular schedule, in part because he had nothing to tie him to one and in part because it made him more difficult to catch. His visits to Parliament were irregular, and between them he wandered the country with an aimlessness that bothered him. When not absorbed in what he still thought of as 'missions', he was a true vagrant, with no purpose to move him.

Sometimes, in quiet towns with no significant Church presence, Ashley lingered a while, testing the limits of the Dark's illusions as he built himself a new identity that could last a day, or a week. The bustle of people living ordinary lives was a balm, for a time, but no one who had not lived through that long day and night in Leá Monde could be anything but a shallow acquaintance, even if Ashley dared show them his true face.

He knew that they watched Merlose still, and Joshua Bardoba, and so he stayed away. But the secrets piled up on his tongue until they choked him, and he had only Sydney--if it was Sydney at all--to speak them to, and whether it was the real thing or the Dark or his own mind there was no version of Sydney that was _comforting_. 

Those twin needs for human contact and for purpose may have been what drove him not to turn away when he saw the village flying plague flags. It was small, and remote, and likely had no doctor of its own. There were no guards set to keep people out--or in--but its distance from anywhere else made it less likely that anyone had broken quarantine in a panic: there was nowhere to go. The houses were closed up, but Ashley could see light beneath most of the doors, and nearly every house flew the flag warning travelers away.

Choosing a house at random, Ashley walked into a scene out of nightmare. Of the family of five that had lived there only one young man was still breathing. Ashley knelt by his side and for a moment he saw the face of that first dying knight in Leá Monde, the one who had asked him to end his pain. Touching the man's shoulder, for just a breath Ashley entertained the idea of healing him. But the disease slipped away from his efforts, too complex and deeply rooted for any magic Ashley knew. 

What, exactly, had he come here to do?

The dying man opened his eyes, then, and reached blindly for something. "Mama?"

Without thinking about it, without ever wondering if the Dark would respond to such a need, Ashley clasped that shaking hand and touched the faltering soul. He sensed the illusion blossom around him and knew the young man felt slender fingers clasping his, knew the man heard his mother's voice when Ashley spoke. "I'm here." 

"I'm scared."

Ashley squeezed the young man's hand, smiled, and lied to him. "It's going to be okay."

The man smiled back, shakily, and closed his eyes again. Ashley stayed there for a minute, or perhaps an hour, while the man's breath slowed, and faltered, and eventually stopped. 

And then he went to the next house, and the next, and he did it over and over again until there was no one left. 

\--

"The Dark is a cursed force and swimming in its waters will taint you beyond saving, but in return it is power with no limit save what the wielder can handle."

Ashley inclined his head, though he didn't answer Sydney just yet. Certainly there was nothing inherently evil or unclean in Merlose's abilities as a heart-seer, or the ability to use spells to fix cloudstones in place or see the traps set in a room. Spells such as Heal and Surging Balm were, without question, positive ones even if they drew on a power rooted in the negative. The Dark was a sword without a hilt. Just holding it was enough to harm the user, but there was nothing stopping them from using it to do positive things. 

But therein lay the problem: Ashley thought of it as a sword, in his heart, because that was what he knew. "In other hands it could have healed those people." Ashley's hands were made to bring peace only through death.

"In the hands of a saint, perhap, if they could tolerate the Dark's existence long enough to learn how to use it."

"Want it too much and the Dark will control you. Reject it too strongly, and it won't respond?"

"The Dark loves best those in the shadows--one foot in darkness and one in light."

A Riskbreaker lived his life in the shadows. But Ashley had yearned for the light since the day his family died (since the day he killed innocents). "What would you have done if I hadn't come? If they'd sent someone like Rosencrantz?" The fallen Riskbreaker had been dismissed for disloyalty, not his moral failings. There were more like him in the ranks, Ashley had no doubt. 

Sydney only pressed one sharp claw to Ashley's lips. "But they did send you."

Ashley never got an answer on the matter of just how accurate Sydney's prophecies had been. How much of his plan had relied on chance? Ashley couldn't believe that Sydney had known what Guildenstern would do--surely Ashley had been meant to take the mantle directly from Sydney, if all had gone to plan. No man, however driven towards his own destruction, would plan for _that_. 

The other question that haunted Ashley was whether Sydney refused to answer because, as much as he loved the sound of his own voice, it was in his nature to obfuscate the true extent of his powers and knowledge, or if it was that Ashley didn't know the answer and therefore his mind's representation of Sydney couldn't know, either.

"Didn't you already come to a decision about this?" Tia smiled at him, then he blinked and the illusion was gone and it was Sydney sitting there beside him again. 

Did it matter whether he was talking to Sydney's spirit, some part of the Dark itself, or his own mind? These conversations helped Ashley sort out his thoughts. Feeling like he was talking to Sydney made him... not happy, not exactly, but something very like it. The feelings were as real as his feelings for his family were. "I suppose I did."

His smile growing wicked, Sydney leaned in close and said, "And just because I like to leave you with a thought to worry at when you wake, did you ever consider that, with the Wellspring destroyed, you may not be as immortal as all that? I'll be very put out if my successor goes and dies of plague."

Waking with a start, as though he had been forcibly ejected from the dream, Ashley rubbed his face with his hands and wondered what the early symptoms of plague might be.

\--

A month passed and Ashley did not die of plague. 

Another plague entirely--one wearing the rose of the Crimson Blades--was becoming more of a concern as time passed. The Cardinal's men had returned to Leá Monde soon after its fall and remained there in the intervening months. At first Ashley had been confident there was nothing left for them to find--that was, indeed, the point of it all--but they continued to study the ruins, seeming determined to reconstruct the Gran Grimoire stone by stone if it came to that.

Reluctantly, Ashley returned to Leá Monde himself, to see what progress the Cardinal's men were making. 

Even from a distance Ashley could feel that there was no life left in the spells carved into Leá Monde's walls. They were dead, empty carvings now. But there were scholars there, too, making rubbings and drawings, copying the lettering that they could read and making conjectures about what they could not. Enough of the carvings were buried beneath the city that Ashley couldn't imagine them making any real progress any time soon, but the Cardinal was clearly persistent and had nearly inexhaustible resources. 

The Blades' camp--nearly a small town, by this point--was crawling with sorcerers. They were all of a lesser calibre--the lot of them together wouldn't match the power Guildenstern had held--but they still complicated matters for Ashley. If they could sense the Dark being used, his illusions would avail him little. But he'd been a Riskbreaker before he was a vessel for the Dark and he could sneak into a military camp without magic if he had to. 

The scholars had reams and reams of paper, all of it covered in renderings of the carvings that made up the Gran Grimoire, and notes on how the various fragments might have been put together. Only a fraction of the city had yet been excavated--they would denude entire forests trying to chronicle the whole thing. 

Ashley let the Dark slide further into his consciousness than he was ordinarily comfortable with as he perused the immense volume of paper. Wrong, said the Dark. Wrong here, and here, and there. Some of the scholars were closer than others, but even all together they hadn't managed to replicate the spells.

Which raised a different concern. If the Cardinal continued with this, if he went through with trying to create a new Gran Grimoire, and did it _wrong_ , what then? Grissom's attempt at summoning beyond his power had nearly killed him and ultimately left him a wandering soul trapped in his own corpse. Magic gone wrong on this scale... how many would die? How many would the Cardinal sacrifice in the attempt?

Holding back a sigh, Ashley made a quick copy of some of the more damning notes and crept back out of the camp. 

He would have to risk seeing Merlose; hopefully she was in Valnain and not on assignment. If anyone would know who within Parliament and the nobility could be trusted not to recreate the horrors of Leá Monde, it would be her. He'd set Parliament against the Cardinal and let them eat each other.

And if that failed, or served only as a holding action, then Ashley would become a blade in the night again; too much had been sacrificed to keep Leá Monde out of the wrong hands, he could not allow anyone to create another Wellspring.

Walking away once more from the ruins of Leá Monde, Ashley felt for an instant the phantom weight of a dying man in his arms. 

\--

Sydney's body was cold and heavy atop him, and Ashley's heart stuttered in panic. He dreamed this sometimes, that he hadn't gotten them out, that he lay beneath the ruins of Leá Monde, immortal and trapped with Sydney's dead body.

An amused laugh broke through the haze of panic, and the heavy coldness resolved itself into Sydney's metal limbs, shifting against Ashley's bare skin as Sydney sat back on his heels, straddling Ashley's thighs. He was naked as well, a glorious vision in pale skin and gleaming metal. "This is a different dream."

Swallowing to wet a suddenly parched throat, Ashley managed to say, "I can see that now."

If this was his own mind playing tricks (and hadn't he decided it didn't matter?), then it was mining the most hidden depths of his soul for this dream. 

Hesitantly, afraid the dream would burst like a soap bubble and vanish if he moved wrong, Ashley reached to touch Sydney. He ran his hands down Sydney's torso, wondering at how that form--slender to the point of fragility--could support the weight of those metal limbs. 

At the juncture where flesh met metal, Ashley paused again. He'd never seen Sydney's legs in life, had never thought about the weight of that much metal, what it might feel like under his hands. Impatient, Sydney grabbed his hands, metal claws cutting him shallowly, and moved Ashley's hands to his thighs himself. 

The metal was warming, matching the temperature of Ashley's skin, and the smooth planes between the ridged joints felt almost alive. The more Ashley touched it, the more the metal felt... familiar... and slowly it dawned on Ashley that what he was feeling was the Dark, running through Sydney's metal limbs like blood through veins. It hummed just under the surface, and once he noticed it the flow seemed to increase in response. 

Sydney bent forward, chest to chest with Ashley, and caught his lips in a kiss. It was fierce and too brief, Sydney toying with him even in this. "We chose aright, in you."

For a brief instant Ashley felt the weight of the Dark, of all the souls that had come home to it in death, thousands upon thousands of them. It was suffocating, terrifying, to feel that gaze turned on him in full, even for that one moment. Then something like laughter rang in his mind and the pressure was gone. It was only Sydney there with him, kissing him again, stealing away his breath and the memory of what lay waiting for him in the Dark.

The dream stretched out into what felt like years as Sydney took his time, bringing Ashley to the edge over and over again, before allowing him a shattering climax that broke the hold of the dream and left Ashley awake, drenched in sweat and sticky with his own come. 

As he cleaned himself with regretfully cold lake water, Ashley catalogued the series of cuts and suspicious bruises that he could see on his body, remembering each one from the dream. 

It changed nothing. (It changed everything). It had to change nothing. Sydney--and the Dark itself--was an impenetrable creature: what happened once might never happen again. Or it might happen every time Ashley dreamed. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Ashley resolved to anticipate nothing.

Anticipate nothing, and treasure the memory.


End file.
